


you never can quite tell

by whoviangoesthere



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Drabbles, Multi, Prompt based drabbles, Short & Sweet, Shorts, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoviangoesthere/pseuds/whoviangoesthere
Summary: A collection of drabbles for various pairings.thalia-amongst-the-thorns over on Tumblr challenged me to do a few of these based on this post:http://washingtonstub.tumblr.com/post/175859703480/send-a-number-and-a-pair-for-a-drabbleI do love me some short and sweet emotions, so here we go.





	you never can quite tell

P – “You lied to me!” – Wash/Maine (aka Scars & Stripes)  
It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was really going on behind the golden dome of Maine’s helmet.  
Or should he say, the Meta’s.  
It was worse to him, to say that, instead of his friend’s name. The name of someone more than that, someone he hadn’t ever pinned down a term for. They never had to. They never would.  
So he went forward with this stupid plot, this idiotic plan that in the back of his fragile and broken mind he knew it would fail, but he kept trying, because he wasn’t going back to prison, wasn’t going to submit himself to the night terrors, the thoughts that wouldn’t let him be, the memories that plagued him and scarred him. He wouldn’t go back to the Director forcing him to swallow pills and walk through mazes just to be his lapdog.  
And he did it all with Maine.  
With the Meta.  
So why, then, for some reason, why was he surprised when he refused to hand over the unit.  
He screamed “You lied to me!” like it was a new concept, like he hadn’t been lying to himself the entire time.  
Like he hadn’t known what was going to happen. That he would fail. That Maine wasn’t there anymore. That the Director had won.  
And he watched as this new absurd family swooped in and took Maine from him. Dragged him away as he lay there, giving up, because the one thing he was fighting for, the one thing he had left, was gone.  
He knew who had lied. And it wasn’t Maine.

V – “Oh, don’t cry…” – Kimbalina  
Carolina had seen Kimball on her bad days. When the missions went south, when she lost good soldiers. When her arguments with Doyle reached a breaking point.  
This…this was different.  
There was silence for minutes after they heard Doyle sign off. Heard the explosion. Knew what had happened.  
Carolina moved silently towards Kimball, who sat along the wall stock still, as if waiting for a blow that never came.  
Carolina knelt in front of her, not saying a word. When Kimball didn’t respond, she gently reached her fingers to the latches on her helmet.  
“Kimball, I need to make sure you’re not hurt,” she lied, crafting some excuse to see her face.  
Kimball didn’t respond. Carolina gulped and lifted the helmet off of her head.  
Her curls were a mess, and they briefly obscured Kimball’s face as they fell out of the helmet into a messy arrangement around her head. Once they cleared, Carolina gasped softly.  
“Oh,” she managed. “Don’t…don’t cry.”  
It was all she could say, for she was dumbfounded by the tears streaming down Kimball’s cheeks. Kimball slowly turned towards Carolina, mouthing words she couldn’t say, and Carolina hugged her, immediately, with no regards to everyone else staring at her.  
She knew there wasn’t anything she could say. She knew there wasn’t anything she could do. So she settled for holding Kimball as she cried into her shoulder, her hair catching on Carolina’s armor, the two of them alone in the world, together.

O – “Tell me the truth.” – Texball  
Tex occasionally had moments when she briefly forgot she wasn’t quite human.  
Living on Chorus for so long had numbed her to the idea that she was practically immortal. Surrounded by death and chaos and destruction erased the thought from her mind.  
So when the bomb went off, and everyone on the squad except her had died, she didn’t know what to do.  
Kimball found her, of course, hiding in her room, running her fingers – her robotic fingers – across her too-smooth artificial skin. She stood at the door, arms crossed, leaning casually against the doorframe. Like she hadn’t just lost six of her good soldiers. Like she wasn’t fazed by the image of a woman taking apart her own skin in front of her.  
“Tell me the truth,” she ordered. Her voice was tight, but authoritative, and in any other context Tex would have found it attractive.  
She looked up at her. Kimball had a small scowl on her face, as if she was trying to pretend she was angry, but Tex could tell that the whole thing was a façade.  
“What?” Tex asked.  
“Did you feel any of it?” Kimball asked bluntly.  
Tex wanted so badly to say yes. Instead she slowly shook her head.  
Kimball’s face fell for a fraction of a second, giving way to sorrow, before pulling herself together again.  
“Is this going to make you reckless?”  
There it was. The reason she was here. She cared too much. It would get her into trouble one day.  
Again, Tex shook her head.  
“Good.”  
Kimball straightened up, and put her hand on the door. She stopped and looked back at Tex.  
“Are you okay?”  
Her voice was tiny.  
Tex shook her head.  
Kimball’s hand fell from the door. Instead, she took a seat next to Tex and put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head into the crook of Tex’s collarbone and sighed.  
“You’re still human in my eyes,” she whispered.  
Tex closed her eyes and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna prompt me some more, I'm all-made-of-stardust on Tumblr.


End file.
